In the winter of 1983-84 Bruno Bischofberger, a Swiss art dealer, became interested in the idea of artistic partnerships. His personal collection included communal works: “I knew collaborations of painters from the 15th to 19th centuries and the cadavre exquis [“exquisite corpse”, a term given to co-operative drawings] of the Surrealists.” He hoped to pair Andy Warhol, a famous pop artist whom he had represented for nearly two decades, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, a young client working in Neo-Expressionism. When Mr Bischofberger proposed the idea, Warhol scoffed. “Do you really think that Basquiat is such an important artist?”
“The Collaboration”, a new play at the Young Vic theatre in London directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah, captures this initial rancour. In his mid-50s, Warhol (Paul Bettany, recently of “WandaVision”) reckons Basquiat’s paintings are “so ugly and angry”. The youthful Basquiat (Jeremy Pope, “One Night In Miami”) thinks Warhol is “old hat”. “We do not meet them in friendship,” Anthony McCarten, the playwright, says. “We meet them as two speculators speculating about the heart, the soul and the art of the other person and trying to work out if it has value.”
The two men are as different as their artistic styles. Basquiat is a free spirit, charming, messy and often high on cannabis. He is a rising star—he posed for the cover of New York Times Magazine in 1985—and prolific, too, able to produce an artwork in an hour. Warhol, by contrast, is uptight, witty and an insatiable gossip. He paints only sporadically and appears to be reaching the end of his own 15 minutes of fame as the price of his work is depreciating. Mr Bischofberger’s idea seems nonsensical.
The play explores their divergent stances on life and art at length. Warhol “had reached the sort of cynical belief that art reflects life, but life was now all surfaces, nobody means what they say anymore and art should do no more than give you a little hit,” Mr McCarten says. Basquiat, meanwhile, “came from another tradition, which had much more fire to it.” He believed “that art can be transformative”.
Through these conversations, the two artists come to understand each other. Basquiat convinces Warhol to paint; Warhol explains his interest in American capitalist imagery. They create works together, such as “Olympics” and “Taxi, 45th/Broadway”: the canvases combine Warhol’s interest in motifs and bold colours with Basquiat’s sparing sensibility. The men begin to empathise with each other, too. Warhol had been shot in his studio by Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist, in 1968 and subsequently had to wear a surgical corset to keep his organs in place. The incident aggravated his existing problems with body image. Basquiat discusses the death of his friend, Michael Stewart, at the hands of the police and his inability to process his grief.
Dramatising the relationship between the two men was challenging: Mr McCarten says he drew on Warhol’s diary for ideas for scenes. “You’re dealing with two very careful curators of their own images. They didn’t really want the world to see anything deeper than the surface in public, they were almost all persona,” he says. “Especially Andy. He was his own greatest creation.” His private reflections offered insight. Warhol, often monosyllabic in interviews, comes across as garrulous. Basquiat, equally judicious with his words, is thoughtful and insightful.
The relationship culminated in an exhibition of 16 works, “Paintings”, in New York in September 1985. “The critiques of the show were almost uniformly negative,” Mr Bischofberger remembered. This did not bother Warhol much: one journalist, reviewing the artist’s first solo exhibition, had written that Warhol was “either a soft-headed fool or a hard-headed charlatan”. But Basquiat was dispirited; he had hoped the partnership would bolster his reputation. He stopped attending the painting sessions at Warhol’s studio.
“The Collaboration” suggests other differences of opinion were a factor, too. There was not much time for a reconciliation: Warhol died in 1987 after a surgical procedure (one partly necessitated by his previous gunshot wound). Basquiat died a year later of a heroin overdose. But, short-lived as it was, the brilliance of their artistic partnership endures and captivates still.
“The Collaboration” continues at the Young Vic, London, until April 2nd